Troublesome Insects
by Mark of the Asphodel
Summary: Sometimes light just makes the darkness harder to endure.  Sometimes living too long in the darkness makes light impossible to withstand.  In between the light and the darkness, Yumina probes the full measure of her soul.  FE3/FE12.


**Troublesome Insects**

I do not own _Fire Emblem_ or any of its characters.

Rated T for overall dark themes, including child abuse. Spoilers for FE3/FE12.

Originally posted this as an entry for round #2 of fe_contest back in early '10. Sat on it for more than a year because it was a real nightmare to write. Enjoy?

* * *

><p>They came in bursts, like spatters of hot grease flying out of a skillet. She felt them flick across her skin, could see them always, just at the edges of her vision where there was light but no color. Yumina slapped at her arms, then thrust her hands deep within the bells of her sleeves to scrape at the skin with her fingernails.<p>

"What is it, princess?"

"It's cold," she lied. She did not let go.

-x-

She still dreamed of the room in Khadein, a place with no windows, only an ornamental screen that let in small fragments of light. They'd gone into that room with a sense of wonder- _this is the City of Magic, the City of Sages_- and in the seconds before the latticework door closed behind them, they'd glimpsed beautiful things. For a moment, they saw gold and precious stones adorning the walls, brilliant patterns of tile on the floor, and then the latticework slid shut and left them with darkness and the sound of their own breaths.

They made a game out of it for a while, counting the holes and making patterns of them, as though the pierced screen were a sky of artificial stars. They ran their fingers over the inlaid walls and the glossy tiles that felt cool to the touch even when the air in their dark world grew hot and stale. They pulled the intricate chain of the mysterious "water-closet" in the corner until the guards threatened to shut it off. Yubello, in one of those bursts of intuition that surprised and delighted her, announced that this room must have been a place where some evil bishop kept his forbidden painted ladies- kept them hidden away from the eyes of the respectable sages and the young students that scurried through the winding streets of Khadein. And Yumina, in turn, sniffed at the screened-in lattice door and agreed she could still smell a hint of musk, a whisper of sandalwood.

By the time they left that room, Yumina wouldn't have known the fragrance of sandalwood from the stench of rotting meat. She remembered the way Bishop Wendell's men recoiled, pressing embroidered handkerchiefs to their faces when the latticework door was ripped away and exposed them to the light.

-x-

"What will you be doing for your final exam, princess? The Aum spell?"

"It is forbidden." The words came out sharp as a steel edge, and Yumina wasn't sorry.

Her silly chattering classmate should have known, after four years in the Academy, that nobody could be allowed to use resurrection magic for an _examination_. But it was what she was known for- Yumina, the one who can use the Aum, just like Bishop Elice.

Her classmate stared at her with the mindless brown eyes of a heifer.

"I'm not going to be another useless Bishop," Yumina declared, not caring if her words circled back to the headmistress. "I'm going to graduate as a Sage. I'll be showing off _real_ magic for my finals."

-x-

She should have been the one to inherit the fire. Fire burned in her soul whenever she saw her brother try to light their dark world with tiny wavering flames. Their mother had spun balls of shimmering light to banish shadows from their nursery, but Yubello could only manage little tongues of fire that devoured themselves within minutes.

"Stop it, Yubello. You're only making the darkness worse." For they found, strangely enough, that they could see well enough at some hours in the day, could see as well as one could see under a moonless sky. Yumina saw clearly when her brother tried to brush away the fleas with inexcusable mercy.

"You have to _kill_ them, Yubello!"

And she went on a rampage against them, hitting against the latticework, against the tiles, against her brother's own back and neck. Yumina battled the fleas until her hands were covered in little bursts of blood.

"Don't, sister." He tried to wipe her fingers clean with the hem of his tunic. It didn't work; Yumina felt the stickiness every time her fingers brushed against one another.

"You should have been the healer," she said to him through painful swallows as she bit back a scream of frustration. "The gods made us come out wrong, Yubello."

-x-

The whispers followed her through the hallways of the Academy. _That's the former princess of Grust? She isn't graceful like a princess. She doesn't smile like a princess. Maybe she's not a real princess at all, not like Bishop Elice._

Maybe one day she really would perform the Aum spell in front of them all, just to show them she was the true daughter of a king. But whenever Yumina entertained fantasies of what she might do one day to her classmates, she felt the tingle of biting insects against her skin, and memories of what she'd been came rebounding back upon her.

-x-

Food and water came through the lattice- food, water, and voices. The meals were slipped in through a rotating panel disguised so cleverly that Yumina could scarcely feel the cracks in the wood; the voices filtered in through the cloth that filled the gaps in the lattice slats.

"Here's your royal breakfast, kiddies."

And in would come the bowls of meal and water.

"Do you intend for us to eat like dogs?" For they were not given a so much as a spoon.

The guards did. Yubello tried to make a game out of that, too- he missed his puppy, and so pretended briefly to _be_ his puppy, eating on his hands and knees and barking like Pegase barked. Yumina resisted, and ate and drank sitting up, with her ankles crossed under her skirts. After a while in the dark, though, she gave in as well, and so the princess of mighty Grust took her meals on the floor, slurping water from the bowl like a dog, covered in fleas like a dog.

When Bishop Elice first gave her a fork to use at dinner, Yumina used it so poorly that her etiquette drew laughs.

-x-

"Do you think your brother will come to see our exams?"

"No. He's busy." Yumina knew that the only reason anyone asked if Yubello was coming was because he was a prince, and the fools all wanted to be his princess. _She_ was the princess of Grust, and no stupid little girl was going to come between her and her twin. She would tell them that to their faces, but she couldn't tell them the real reason Yubello never came to see her.

One day, Yumina would master her fire, and then no one at all would come between them.

-x-

The faceless guards said nasty things at them through the lattice, telling them always how very lucky they were to be in their dark room with the fleas and the dog-bowls of water.

"Be glad you're in here, kiddies. If the Altean finds you, he'll put you both to the sword."

It had dawned on them, slowly, that their father had done other terrible things besides sending them to Khadein to be "cared for" by Pontifex Gharnef. Somehow, their father was responsible for the death of the old King of Altea, and if the dead man's son ever captured Khadein, they would both be taken in revenge. The guards told them bedtime stories through the lattice- stories of the Altean and his terrible allies. Lord Hardin would catch Yumina and give her to his savage Aurelian warriors to pass around before they used Yubello for target practice. Princess Minerva would feed them both to her war-dragons. They'd be torn to small pieces, until nothing was left of them but scraps of meat and clothing.

They were safe in their dark room with its stars that never moved across the sky. Safe, and together. No dragons, no arrows, no terrible people slicing them up with a bloodied sword.

One day, the bowls of meal and water never came. Yumina screamed through the lattice at the guards, calling them beasts and animals and every foul name she knew, but in return there was nothing.

"They've abandoned us."

She tried to force open the hidden panel in the lattice, but her fingers didn't want to do the work. Besides that, even as thin as Yumina felt she'd become, she knew neither of them could fit through that tiny space in the door. They'd have to be the size of a cat, or a large rat... they'd have to shrink down like a pair of mice to escape.

Yubello looked at her, and Yumina sensed a strange clarity in him, around him, like the halo of a saint in a stained-glass window.

"The rebel army must be here," he said.

"They'll kill us!"

"It might not be worse than starving to death," he said simply.

Yumina searched the room even though she knew there was nothing available- nothing strong enough for a rope, nothing sharp enough for a blade, nothing for poison except their own filth from the water-closet. She strained the latticework to see if she could break away a section of sharp wood, and succeeded only in breaking what remained of her fingernails.

They lay on the tiles, speckles of light from the pierced screen washing over them. Yumina ran her fingertips over the cracked tiles and wondered if she could pry a section loose and use it to bleed them both dry.

"I don't think I'm ever going to be King of Grust," Yubello said, and he didn't sound sad or frightened about it.

Yumina said nothing. If they died, they'd see Mother again, but she wanted to see Father again so she could scream at him and call him a fool. The rage kept Yumina awake long after Yubello had fallen to sleep. She was angry at the cowardly guards, at her father, at the rebels, at the itching bites on her arms and legs and neck.

When voices sounded behind the lattice, they weren't the voices of the faceless guards, and Yumina knew her brother's intuitions were again true. She rolled to cover as much of Yubello as she could; if the rebels were coming for them with swords, they would have to pierce her own body before they could reach her brother. Her noble gesture didn't last, though. When the latticework fell away, Yumina curled up in pain, both hands clapped over her eyes to shield them. The light streaming between her fingers was blinding.

-x-

Bishop Elice invited Yumina for a special luncheon to discuss her plans for the final examination.

"Are you still intending to attempt Bolganone?"

It was the most difficult fire incantation, and the most powerful. Yumina had trouble with the lesser Elfire spell, and her experiments with Bolganone resulted in smoke, scorched walls, and uncontrolled sparks- all evidence of failure.

"Yes." Yumina stirred her iced custard until it became a soupy mess. Bishop Elice ought to know that iced custard was so cold it bothered her teeth.

"Rizziah might be more adaptable to your talents," said Elice. "Healers have a natural affinity for light magic."

"I'll perform Bolganone. That, and a surprise."

"A surprise?" The bishop showed mild interest; she was the kind of irritating person who never could be surprised by anything.

-x-

They came home, and their father did not know them. He lay in bed and turned his face to the wall rather than speak to them.

"He's guilty," Yubello said.

"I want him to look at us and see what his cowardice has done to us."

She wanted him to see his children- so underfed they looked two years below their true age. She wanted him to see how the darkness had taken them, stunted them, warped them, and then surrendered them to the agony of light. She wanted her father to know how sunlight or firelight or even looking directly at a candle pained her eyes now, how her teeth hurt terribly when the broth was too hot or the water too cold.

Some weeks later, their father died. He never acknowledged Yubello as his heir. He never sought their forgiveness.

-x-

After her luncheon with Bishop Elice, the other girls assumed Yumina was a fountain of court gossip and other useless knowledge.

"Is the king coming to see our exams?" They asked as though the first graduating class from the Royal Academy of Magic was the most important thing under heaven.

"Bishop Elice didn't say her brother was coming."

A pity, too, as Yumina wanted to see him even more than the other girls did.

-x-

General Lorenz took charge of them when their father died. They were frightened of him, at first- Yubello was frightened of the general's height and deep voice and missing eye, and Yumina was upset by Lorenz because of the way he'd surrendered the capital of Grust to the rebels and so humiliated their father right into his grave. Lorenz spent two years trying to gain their trust, and the trust of their people. Yubello's people, Lorenz would remind them, for he would see to it that Yubello was crowned king and Grust kept independent from the Archanean Empire. He would see to it that Grust took its proper place in the world, the place from which it had fallen under King Ludwik's miserable rule.

At the end of those two years, they wept and screamed when they found the Prince of Altea standing with bloodstained hands over their general's body.

-x-

Yumina spent her days closeted in the most private corners of the Academy, perfecting her surprise. Her only witnesses were the six-legged kind, the ones that always seemed to follow her.

-x-

They had everything wrong, the Prince of Altea said, when he'd finally caught them. He was very pleased to see them both, and meant them no harm. The world was a dangerous place, with enemies springing out from all sides, and they'd be so much safer in his party.

Yubello believed every word of it. Yumina felt she'd heard everything before, and was even more skeptical when the glittering prince tried to set her at ease. He spoke to her of Elice, always of Elice, the elder sister who was gracious and kind, selfless and filled with every virtue. Elice was the perfect princess, the perfect priestess, a model woman in all respects. Elice, he said, could teach her so much. He seemed unaware of what it _said _to Yumina that perfect Elice was a prisoner, a captive in need of rescue. She stopped listening to his words after a time, and instead just watched his teeth, even and straight, while he told her of all the good things in life that awaited her if she took Elice as a mentor.

When not telling her of Elice's virtues, Prince Marth made a great deal of Yumina's relationship with her brother. How wonderful it was that the two of them could study together! If Marth and Elice had ever been lonely as children, if was when they went their separate ways for lessons- Marth couldn't learn Elice's magic, and Elice never studied the sword. They might not feel as close now, with Yubello working on his fire spells and Yumina practicing with healing staves, but in the future...

Yumina stared at those perfect even teeth and agreed that, yes, she would one day use fire.

-x-

"What did it feel like to use the resurrection spell?" Cow-eyes asked the question this time. They never got tired of bothering her about it. What did it feel like to bring someone back from the dead?

"I think the more interesting question is, what does it feel like to be brought back from the dead?" She leveled her most fearsome expression at Cow-eyes. "Maybe one day you'll find out."

-x-

Everyone in Prince Marth's army was happy when they found out Yumina could use the Aum Staff. Not happy for her- happy for themselves.

"Just like Elice," they said, and then they began to make plans for what Yumina could do with her sacred gift. Yumina didn't have a say in the matter. She wasn't allowed to bring back her father so she could finally scream out her fury at him. She wasn't allowed to bring back General Lorenz so he could take her and Yubello home and have everything work out the way he'd promised. She wasn't allowed to even entertain the thought of reviving her mother. Yumina raised her staff to the vaulted ceilings of the Dragon's Altar, and unlocked the gates of Time and Death at Prince Marth's bidding. Like an obedient girl. Like an obedient dog.

Then, at the end of the great journey, the confusing mess of a war, was the princess Elice. Elice embraced Yumina like a long-lost sister, healed the rot in Yumina's teeth and the scars on her fleabitten arms, and sundered her from Yubello. Yubello was taken back to Altea to learn to be a good little mage. Yumina stayed with Elice to learn to be a good little healer. Yumina wasn't at all shocked to find she'd been lied to.

Being at Elice's school was, in its own way, as bad as being in the dark room at Khadein. Here, too, were faceless mocking voices. Yumina, more alone than she'd ever been, could take no solace in the memory of her royal father, he who was termed Ludwik the Treacherous, Ludwik the Coward, and- most hurtful of all- Ludwik the Last. She could find no comfort in the fading memory of her mother. And she could not see her brother- he was studying hard, they said, under the care of the newly-crowned Altean king.

Yumina- princess of nothing in particular- batted at specks in the air and wished she could go home.

-x-

Yumina slammed her fire tome shut on the flittering whining thing that had been bothering her for a quarter of an hour. She opened the tome carefully, then took the tiny crushed body and held it to the light. It was no flea, but rather some strange species of fly with long delicate legs. It had been a bloodsucker, though- the spatter of blood on her the pages of her tome confirmed it.

Yumina concentrated all the fire in her soul into the body of that small insect. The fly's legs curled into wisps of ash. Yumina smiled.

-x-

She saw her brother once, at the time of the winter festival. He was not allowed to come to her at the Academy, so she traveled to see him at his quarters in Altea Castle. He was dressed now like an Altean, in a short tunic and long trousers. He spoke more like an Altean than any man of Grust ought to.

"When will you be crowned?"

He looked oddly hurt at the question.

"I can't even think about that until I have finished my studies."

"You are nearly seventeen!"

"In Altea, to be seventeen is to be still accounted as a child."

She stared at him.

"You are not an Altean."

"Altean law is common custom now."

This was true; after all the wars and murders and acts of vengeance, Altea was the main power of the land.

"You are a prisoner," she told him. "You never will be King of Grust."

As she walked from his room, she could hear her brother's whisper.

"Yumina..."

She could not decipher the rest of the sentence.

-x-

The staffwork portion of the exam was second nature to her now- transport this rabbit from one end of the hall to the other, unlock this series of doors, prevent your fellow students from using their own magic in a charade of duel. She was not asked to raise anyone from the dead. Mistress Linde, though sworn to act impartial for the course of the exam, was smiling a little, and Bishop Elice on her throne watched Yumina intently. There was never any question that she'd pass the part of the exam that could make her a bishop; now, with offensive magic, Yumina would truly prove herself.

First, a performance of Bolganone. Yumina produced a self-contained column of flame, without a flare to scorch the ceiling, without a shower of sparks or a glut of excess smoke. The fire dissipated neatly, and it left the practice dummy as nothing but a scattering of ash- a perfect simulation of what Yumina's power would do to a target with no resistance. Yumina did not smile her triumph. Bolganone had gone flawlessly, but the fire spell hadn't shown Linde, shown Elice, the full measure of her soul.

Time, at last, for the surprise.

Yumina began the incantation she'd adapted from one of the most ancient tomes known to humans. As she recited the spell, she could see flecks dancing in the edges of her vision, could hear a steadily mounting buzz in her ears. Her cheeks and arms began to tingle, as though tiny feet flicked against her skin.

_Swarm_.

A flood of grey and purple energy poured from her hands, hurtling thirty paces down the gallery. The bolt of energy broke into countless fragments that expanded into a flickering sphere. Hissing, buzzing, whining, _singing_... they coalesced into a single mass of wings and legs and venom, and obliterated the dummy target. Then the insects were gone, dissolved into air. The practice dummy lay on its platform- garments in shreds, hands and face eaten away, offal spilling from its split husk of skin.

A trickle of sweat dripped down Yumina's cheek.

"Brilliant, Yumina. Just brilliant. I've never seen the Swarm spell hold such power." Elice seemed so genuinely pleased, so delighted, as though for once she'd been truly surprised. "We'll have to show off your skill to our brothers."

Yumina touched her tongue to the bead of moisture on her lip and tasted salt.

"Yes. We'll show them."

**The End**

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><p>Author's Note: I personally do not believe Yumina ever 100% accepts that Marth didn't kill Lorenz, or at least isn't responsible for his death on some level. Or the demise of Yumina's father, either. I also don't believe she'll take well to being separated from her brother after the war, which is indeed what happens. So, as dark as this is, I do think it springboards fairly well off what canon gives us regarding the twins.<p> 


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